As far back as I can remember, right from when I was very young, I have always had some art project on the go, whether it be a pencil drawing of a cartoon character, some amazing princess in a fantasy land, or a painting of landscapes using my basic little watercolour painting palette and brushes. As a child, art was my ‘go to’ if there was any spare time to fill. I have fond memories of sketch pad and pencil in hand, trying to capture the scenery that passed by as my family and I boated along the canals in Holland.
Art has continued to be my ‘go to’ throughout my life, in fact I would go as far as to say that without the ability to be creative, my life would not be balanced, as art to me is a wonderful way to completely relax; it is a chance to escape, and to be transported to the place I am creating.
There have been stages where travel, running a business and caring for my children when they were little, did not allow any time for creativity; however around twenty years ago, when our youngest started going to kindergarten, I had this strong urge to do something for myself and this is when I remembered what fundamentally made me tick - it was art and creativity of course.
As New Zealand has the most amazing scenery it became clear to me that I wanted to recreate these beautiful landscapes, but I wanted to do this well, so off I went and enrolled in a Water colour painting evening class with the Waikato Society of Arts. From watercolour classes I moved to Acrylic painting classes, as even-though I thoroughly enjoyed creating water colour paintings, I felt the need to do large scale more complex paintings, and I wanted to have the ability to blend colours and create more dramatic scenes.
See more about Henriette here.
